5 thoughts on “The Iron Writer Weekend Quickie #237”

“What hell are we gonna do with a truckload of out-of-date Grape Kool-Aid?” asked Buster as he smacked his little brother Case around the head with his own baseball cap.
“Jenna loves purple, so I thought…” said Case.
“And?” Buster hit Case a few more times with his own cap before giving it back to him.
“Well, it’s her birthday coming soon and…” began Case.
“You know what we gonna do, we gonna go out in the bay and have a good night with d’em fireworks! Not drinking dumbass out-of-date Grape Kool-Aid ’til it comes out our eyeballs!”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m talking ’bout, and we better get started soon, there be like only three weeks to go! When I saw this in the market, I stole it right up!”
They shared a few anxious moments until Buster caught onto Case’s thoughts.
“Ah, my little brother! You using your perspicasity!”
***
The night came and the family surprised their little sister Jenna with the biggest birthday party on the island. And not only did she have the biggest party, she also had the best fireworks display the place had ever seen. AND not only was it the best, it was PURPLE!

Bob looked up from his stand-up paddle-board and clearly understood everything. “Fools!” he yelled, “Can’t you see the deception? He stood to his feet, waved his paddle, and yelled at his friends around the bonfire on shore. Mary pointed and commented to Dave, “I see Bob’s having a good time.” Neither of them could hear what Bob was saying.

Bob looked up at the fireworks as terror consumed him. What his ignorant friends failed to discern was the hideous cloud monster looming ominously overhead. His face and body, an undulating amorphous churning of dark matter and piercing eyes mocked Bob personally It spoke aloud, “This is for you, Bob!” Ray beams shot from his eyes and obliterated a pair of sea turtles swimming nonchalantly through the water. Bob became violent and began screaming, “NO! NO! Leave the sea turtles alone! They never harmed anyone! They’re innocent!” But the hideous beast proceeded to annihilate a condor flying by, several sea otters, and a hippopotamus, or two. It chortled, “And I don’t care much for plankton either, and continued laughing at Bob’s impotence to stop him.

Bob began smacking the water with his paddle and screaming, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”
Dave and Mary realized what was going on at the same time.
Dave murmured, “I told him not to drink a big glass of the grape Kool Aid.”
Mary sighed, “I don’t see how he gets away with it.”

Though never what you’d call loquacious
And very far from perspicacious
But understandably cretaceous
(being a man and al!)
He offered her a mansion spacious
He was just plumb bodacious
That is to say audacious
In his pursuit of her.

She was, in turn, flirtatious
And just a leetle big mendacious
but could not be called fallacious
(except for her real age, being a woman and all)
She wasn’t what you’d call rapacious
But she adored that mansion spacious
In fact, because she was sagacious
She married the guy and lived happily ever after!

They married on the 4th of July
On a gondola floating down the Chattahoochee River
With fireworks provided by the Bang Bang Lady of Seale, Alabama
And served grape Kool Aid to their guests.

It was the Fourth of July fireworks festival, but my heart wasn’t in it. Cassidy Elmore, had gone missing. She vanished into thin air. A police investigation was ongoing, but she still hadn’t returned and I couldn’t let it go.
At school I sat next to Cassidy in math class, every test she angled her paper allowing me to copy without even having to ask. Her perspicacity made it possible for me to pass the ninth grade.
I sat on my bed and spread out every math exam taken over the school year; on every test it was the last answer marked wrong. Did Cassidy get the last answer incorrect on every test on purpose?
The wrong answers seemed to be a pattern, no wait—they were coordinates! I jumped up and pulled the old coastal map off the lake off the wall, the first point started right where Cassidy’s house was! I traced the numbers up the ragged coastline then out over the water and my finger finally stopped at Hyde island, aptly named as it was hidden in fog year round.
Did Cassidy go to the island? And if so why? And why hadn’t she told anyone? Could her wrong answers lead me to the right ones? I stuffed the tests and the map into my backpack along with a flashlight from the kitchen drawer. Bracing myself with a swig of Kool-Aid, then I set out for Hyde island.